Death in Heaven
by UnitedShadow
Summary: A rewrite of the episode of series 8 titled "Death in Heaven". You're welcome.
1. 1

_**Following the backlash of the Doctor who episode titled "Death in Heaven", I thought I'd rewrite it, given that it had a very good setup with Dark Water. You're welcome.**_

**Death in Heaven**

The Doctor couldn't have imagined it being any worse. Here he stood, next to his arch-nemesis, Missy - who just so happened to be his prior arch-nemesis, the Master. Whilst he stood staring at the Cybermen pouring out of St Paul's, passers-by stopped to take photos and film themselves in front of the metal monsters. How naive this generation was - he'd saved Earth from the Cybermen in the past, but that was only his past. This current 'future', or the people of this moment in time, had not been told of the dangers of the Cybermen. All it looked to be to them was a publicity stunt of sorts.

"Oh, doesn't it look so pretty...? All these people, ripe for the harvest?" Missy purred in her coy-as-usual voice, standing beside the Doctor with an arm around his shoulders. "So blissfully unaware that they too will soon end up... dead?"

"What are you planning?" The Doctor could barely hold back his frustration and shock as tourists continued snapping photos and selfies. The Cybermen appeared to pose, standing still when a small crowd approached them. Missy ignored The Doctor, lifting up a wrist. She spoke toward the bracelets upon this wrist in a clear and authoritarian voice.

"Do not kill the Doctor!"

Bemused, The Doctor looked at Missy as if she wasn't already crazy enough to begin with, but as the Cybermen approached the two, her reasoning became clear. Once they were surrounded, he would have no way out. Scrambling into his coat pocket for his sonic screwdriver, he pulled it out, but Missy immediately turned her device on it. A thin, red beam of light shot from her device toward the screwdriver, sending a trail of sparks into the air long with a small puff of smoke. "You're not getting away that easily." She winked. The Doctor stared at his dysfunctional screwdriver in shock horror, pushing himself away from Missy as he pocketed it. However, he couldn't get far before being penned in by Cybermen who by now had made their way across the square. Those who weren't innocently posing with tourists had the Doctor surrounded.

"Tell me!" The doctor roared, barely able to contain his anger and confusion. "What are you planning?!"

"Oh dear, did you hit your head during the regeneration process? You weren't always this slow." Missy giggled, approaching the Doctor, raising a hand gently into the air, her bracelets jangling. "I'm going to show you something." Then she clicked her fingers.

Clara stood defiantly by the door of Doctor Chang's office that she'd failed to open. The Cyberman that'd once been resting in the Dark-Water-filled glass cabinet in the same room now stood before her, arm poised to fire a deadly laser shot.

"I'm more useful to you alive." Clara spoke assertively, with her full body facing toward the Cyberman.

"Negative." The Cyberman responded.

"Look, I'm useful. Look in your Cyber Network. Who do you know that can change their face at any given moment?"

Pausing for thought and to scan the Cyber Network, the Cyberman began to lower their arm, but promptly raised it again. "Clara Oswald does not change her face."

"Are you always this stupid? I'm not Clara Oswald!" She began advancing toward the Cyberman, who did not flinch, and merely trained its laser arm on her. Clara's eyes flickered over to the plaque that rested on the glass cabinet that the Cyberman had stepped out of. She quickly read the name on it, then turned her attention back to the Cyberman. "Your name is Doctor Skarosa. Therefore, Doctor Skarosa, are you not aware that I am much like you - a doctor?"

"A doctor?" The Cyberman's lights flashed confusedly. "You are not a doctor. You are Clara Oswald."

"No, Clara Oswald doesn't exist. I am The Doctor." Clara smiled, her voice increasing in desperation.

"Negative. The Doctor is outside with our leader - The Master."

"The Master...?" Was all Clara managed to say before a bolt of energy struck her in the chest, disintegrating her into a thousand pieces.

The Cybermen surrounding The Doctor and Missy suddenly stood to attention, saluting with a fist against their chest. The passer-bys stopped taking photos as the scene around them grew more eerie with every passing moment. The innocuous Cybermen who they'd been taking photos with had also saluted, interrupting many camera shutters and consequently presented a blurred picture on their iPhone camera rolls. The Cybermen horde pouring out of St Paul's had also stopped, many standing guard in a semicircle outside the building.

"We are under your command!" The Cybermen spoke in their traditionally robotic voice.

"Delete humanity in one hour." Missy grinned, not a shed of remorse crossing her face. The Doctor looked around, aghast, as the Cybermen assumed their standard posture before raising their wrist-mounted lasers. The first shot went out, scattering an unknown tourist into millions of atoms. The gathered crowd screamed, losing themselves among the throng of the panicked city in their efforts to escape as the rest of the Cybermen gathered around the Doctor and St Paul's also began to fire their weapons. Missy lowered the hand of the fingers she'd just clicked, and innocently latched onto one of the Doctor's hands. She pulled herself closer toward him, and as he backed off, the Doctor felt the familiar click of something on his wrist. He looked down to see that one of the bracelets that Missy had been wearing was now on his wrist. He reached a hand toward it to pull it off, but it held fast, the Gallifreyan symbols on its face lighting up with a faint red hue.

"They're yours to do with, as you command." Missy winked, stepping backward and mimicking a slight bow.

With a moment's hesitation as another citizen was sent to the abyss in a shower of atoms, The Doctor spoke toward the bracelet: "Stand down!"

The Cybermen however, did not stand down, and continued firing their weapons. He looked at Missy, who giggled as she adjusted her hat, assuming her ruling gaze. "But of course, I wouldn't be worthy of being The Master, if I hadn't accounted for your habit of trying to escape a desperate situation without casualties."

"What have you done, and what are you doing?" The Doctor approached Missy, nearly grabbing her by her collar in frustration. But of course, he knew that'd be exactly what she wanted, so he kept his distance.

"My, my, so many questions. Why don't you embrace the gift I've given you for once? The power to change... the planet. The course of time and history." Missy spun on the spot and twirled her umbrella, apparently enjoying the Doctor's predicament. "Why not use it to save those who you... really want to save?" She winked knowingly.

With one last look at his newfound gift, and with the knowledge that the Cybermen had been told not to kill the Doctor, he thought for a second - a difficult task with the bodies of unknown citizens being blown into tiny pieces all around him - and headed straight for St Paul's. As the Doctor ran with his red-trimmed tailcoat flapping behind him, Missy let out a little giggle.


	2. 2

_**As always, let me know if there are any issues with the story, or if there are any inconsistencies... anything really! Feel free to send me a private message or leave a review. Thanks!**_

Clara awoke with a groan, her body aching all over. Her pounding headache faded as quickly as it had come, and she stabilized herself on the desk in front of her with her hands. Wait a minute - there was a desk in front of her? And she was sitting in a chair in a dimly-lit yet smart room? How could this be? As her mind raced for answers, Clara recalled her last moments - a Cybermen had his laser primed, ready to fire. She'd failed to convince Dr Skarosa-turned-Cyberman that she was The Doctor. And of course, how could she convince them? Their Cyber Network meant that they'd known the Doctor was outside with The Master, so that logically meant she couldn't have been The Doctor. Just who was The Master anyway? Was the Master someone she'd seen when she went into the Doctor's timestream...? It couldn't be. Harold Saxon? A psychopath, and most certainly nothing like The Great Intelligence or whoever else could've been behind this sort of plan.

As Clara mulled in the depths of her thoughts, a door in the corner of the room opened to reveal a smartly-dressed man in a dark blue suit and trouser ensemble. He closed the door behind himself as he stepped in, a file in his other hand and a smile on his face. His hair was neatly trimmed and slightly oiled, giving him a more comical than businesslike appearance.

"My name's Seb. Short for Sebastian, that is." The man grinned, placing his file on the desk opposite Clara. Stretching out a hand for her to shake, she hesitated before taking it. Their pleasantries done after a brief handshake, Seb quickly got down to business and opened the file, sitting back in his chair. "Your name... Clara Oswald, am I right?"

"Y-yes..." Clara nodded and spoke affirmation under her breath. Seb took this as his cue to continue, taking out a form from the back of the file, and a pen from the pocket of his neatly-arranged jacket. He put them both next to Clara, and pointed at the form.

"Please put your full name on this form, including your middle name and of course, your other details." He smiled. "In the meantime, would you like a coffee? Tea, perhaps?"

"I... Where am I?" Clara asked, ignoring the form and Sebastian's questions.

"Oh, let's start with the easy stuff first!" Sebastian chuckled gently, wiping his nose. He replaced the tissue in his pocket, and stood up, walking over to the side of the room Clara'd not paid attention to yet. An ominous-looking curtain was draped over what could only be a large window behind it. Clara's eyes followed Sebastian, and she was compelled to also stand up and walk over to the opposite side of the window that he stood on. With a flourish, Seb drew open the curtains to reveal an emerald-light-encrusted metropolis, suspended all around in three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Clara gasped, nearly stumbling backward onto the table, but Seb gently reached for and held her arm. Regaining her composure, Clara took deep breaths, a hand to her chest feeling it rise and fall, with the other held by Sebastian.

"W-what is this?" She asked Sebastian, dumbstruck. She'd never seen anything like it, not even in the Doctor's timestream. Sebastian carefully took his hand away as she approached the window with renewed vigor.

"This, Clara..." Seb began to explain, pausing for dramatic effect. "Is Heaven. It's where you go when you die." He stood beside the window, awaiting the inevitable barrage of questions. But Clara had other ideas.

"Is... Danny... here?" She turned her gaze to meet his. Raising his eyebrow to the unexpected question - he'd rather moreso have expected a 'what now' sort of question - Seb went on to answer it.

"Yes. And no." He chuckled, shifting his weight awkwardly as he began to answer. Clara looked at him funnily, expecting further elaboration. He cleared his throat, then continued. "Yes, he is here. I can take you to see him if you like. But he is not... here, here." Seb tried to elaborate with hand gestures, cupping the air on either side of his body to create a diagram. "This is you in the 'material world'. The place you were before you died. This however, is Heaven. The place you go when you die. Your consciousness has been taken from your body, and... 'uploaded'... for lack of better word." He chuckled with the awkwardness. Explaining Heaven to the thousands if not millions of attendees was never going to get any less awkward. "Your body is not here in the material sense, but your minds are, and you have been rendered here as a manifestation of your physical self from the best moments from before you died."

"So basically, he is here, and I can see him?" Clara asked, growing increasingly urgent with her expectation of an answer. She stepped toward Seb as he smiled awkwardly, raising her face to meet his slightly higher eye level. "Take me to him."

The Doctor barged past the Cybermen outside of St Paul's, dashing into the building-turned-mausoleum. As he scurried along the polished marble hallways and past the empty Cyberman-containing cells, he looked around in horror. The mausoleum was larger than he could ever have imagined, with newly-created Cybermen pouring out of unseen hallways and holding cells. The Cybermen that the Doctor passed ignored him as if he were merely a panicked tourist running for the bus in the middle of Oxford, and continued marching. The only logical way this mausoleum could be explained was through Gallifreyan technology, much like the Nethersphere hanging in the centre was. Essentially, it was a dimension within an object - a fixed-location dimension. Larger on the inside than the outside, a portal to 'somewhere else', encased within a physical, existing object. And then it struck him. Pausing for the briefest of seconds, the Doctor stopped running through the crowds of Cybermen, and approached the banister that separated him from a massive fall. He looked down to see expanding nothingness, a reflection of the corridors he'd been running through. Then he looked back up at the Nethersphere.

"A Gallifreyan hard drive. Of course!" The Doctor's mouth went dry as he considered the implications of the situation. "The Promised Land... A location, within a location! How could I have been so stupid?!" He then doubled over as he recalled the words of the half-face man. His mission had been to reach The Promised Land. With his mind uploaded to the database upon his death, he'd undoubtedly reached it. Once a person's mind had been uploaded to the hard drive upon their death, it was Missy's call to action that had revived the Cybermen with the use of the minds from the Hard Drive. But only when they - or she - was ready. So Dr Chang hadn't been lying... the afterlife really did exist. And Clara had spoken to Danny. It'd been successful because they had communicated with the hard drive. A mind within a hard drive... A new location.

Then the Doctor's eyes flashed with realization. Clara. Breaking off his train of thought and feeling increasingly nauseous, he ran back to where he'd left Clara - in Doctor Chang's office. Pushing past the ever-growing crowds of Cybermen, he pushed out mental images of the metal monsters zapping innocent citizens but once he reached the door to the office, his pace slowed. Something was terribly wrong. Wisps of smoke were wafting through the cracks in the door, and a Cyberman stood inside. Habitually, the Doctor pulled out his Sonic Screwdriver, and replaced it in frustration as he recalled its ineffectiveness, thanks to Missy.

"This calls for some old-time action..." The Doctor muttered, then approaching the double doors and kicking it open squarely in the centre, almost causing it to fly off its hinges as the lock broke. The doors swung open wildly, smacking against the walls on the other side, and closing again slowly as the Doctor stepped through. But what the Doctor saw was what he'd hoped he'd never see. The reason he'd never brought companions along with him.

What was left of Clara was in the middle of the room, nothing more than a pile of ash.

The Cyberman stood guard, emotionless and saluting, unaware of the rage that crossed the Doctor's features.


	3. 3

The metal door slid open to reveal a hunched-over figure leaning on a glass banister, looking over the metropolis of Heaven. They looked around to see their new visitor. Their eyes lit up when they recognized who their visitor was, and it only took an instant. This hunched-over figure was Danny, who was no less than overjoyed to see Clara, who stood apprehensively at the door. Turning slowly, he raised both of his hands in surrender, as if to ensure Clara he was who he said - and looked like - he was. Tears streaming down her face, Clara dashed toward him, grabbing and hugging him tightly, never wanting to let go again. Danny joined in with the embrace, muttering apologies for not being able to remember the name of the restaurant where they had their first date.

"I will leave you two for a minute. It seems like your earlier phone call wasn't enough!" Seb chuckled and smiled, leaving the balcony and closing the door behind him, thereby leaving the two lovebirds alone. Clara pushed herself off Danny, drying her eyes with the back of her palm.

"Are you alright, Clara?" Danny asked, his hands on her shoulders. Clara could hardly hold back her tears as she continued rubbing her eyes, making them red and sore. She shook her head furiously, then embracing Danny again, unable to explain he emotions as she began to sob.

"I'm so sorry!" She cried, wishing the moment would never end. Danny nodded in understanding - she'd just been through a phone call to her lover that she'd assumed was someone else as he was unable to tell her the name of the restaurant where they'd had their first date. Consequently, this meant Clara didn't believe Danny was still alive (in a way) inside the Nethersphere and her discovery that the afterlife actually existed (again, in a way) and that Danny wasn't lying about his existence in the afterlife was too much to bear. She'd essentially lied to herself by denying the truth, although it'd been hard to prove at the time through a mere phone call. Additionally, with Clara here, that meant she'd died. Going through the pain of death... Danny knew it all too well.

The iPad on the glass coffee table next to Danny beeped, and both Danny and Clara looked at it. The screen showed an interface, marked with Gallifreyan and Cyberman symbols, and on the middle of the screen was a thin, red button marked "DELETE". Clara looked up at Danny through her blurry, tear-soaked eyes, who shook his head and returned to the embrace. "I like my emotions." He muttered.

The Doctor advanced toward the Cyberman in Doctor Chang's office, taking care not to disturb Clara's remains.

"Skarosa, did you do this?!" He demanded, pointing at the ashes.

The Cyberman spoke with its traditional robotic voice, confirming the Doctor's suspicions. "Correct."

Groaning in frustration, the Doctor clutched at his hair, pacing the room, careful as always not to step too close to what Clara left behind. Then after a few long seconds and with heavy breaths, he approached the Cyberman, regaining his composure and fixing his tie. He looked at Skarosa, and asked with authority: "What is your plan?"

The Cyberman stopped saluting, and bowed its head as if communicating with the Cyber Network. After a brief pause, it looked up again and returned to its salute. It spoke haltingly. "All humans will be deleted. Their minds will be uploaded into the Nethersphere. Their minds will be downloaded into new bodies we have assigned for this Cyber-purpose. The human race will all become Cybermen."

"And what are your... locked... commands? Your... prohibited commands?" The Doctor asked.

"We cannot Stand Down. We cannot Destroy the Nethersphere. We cannot Destroy Other Cybermen." The Cyberman replied.

Pondering this, the Doctor looked down at the bracelet still stuck to his wrist. Removing it was only half the problem - if he was unable to use the Cybermen to destroy each other or even the Nethersphere himself, that meant he had no way of physically stopping the Cybermen from their advance. With every person they killed, a new mind was uploaded into the Nethersphere. Then when each mind was ready, they were downloaded into a new body. But he couldn't destroy the bodies or the minds... there had to be another way. His eyes floated over to what was left of Clara's corpse. With a grunt, he left the room, leaving the Cyberman still saluting.

Clara sat in silence opposite Danny, the coffee table separating them, each unaware of what to say next. It felt like no matter what they said, it'd be unable to repair their relationship. Did they even have a relationship in the first place? Sure, they'd had a couple of dates but nothing substantial came of them and they'd both ended badly. Having to leave urgently and being thought of as a weirdo wouldn't have rated highly on their outing list. With a slight chuckle, Danny looked up from the iPad he'd been staring at, and Clara followed his gaze. "Should we start over?"

Clara gasped, adjusting her hair and wiping her eyes and nose. "Y-yeah, that'd be great... yeah." She nodded furiously as she spoke, then looked over toward the glass railing. Danny smiled, and relaxed in his chair, turning off the iPad. When he looked over again at Clara, her expression wasn't what he expected to see. Slowly, her sadness turned to confusion and she stood up, a hand on the railing. Looking over the railing, the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view - or was it an panorama? - of green lights was beginning to turn dark. One by one, small, green lights that suggested the habitation of skyscrapers all around them began to flicker out and die.

"What's going on?" Clara asked, bemused. Danny could do no more than shake his head and shrug, and it was at that moment that the metal door to the balcony slid open again. Both Clara and Danny turned to face the new occupant, and it was none other than Missy, with her umbrella posed around her shoulder as if she were Mary Poppins.

"What are you doing here?!" Clara asked, aghast. The last time she'd seen Missy was kissing the Doctor rather passionately, and the revelation that she was actually the Master thanks to a Cyberman's words still stuck with her. The confusion was too great to solve at the present moment, particularly with The Master right in front of her. But she was here... Therefore, did she die? Or... did something else happen to allow her to come here?

"Oh!" Missy pretended to gasp, pursing her lips. She twirled her umbrella, putting its tip to the floor to lean on the handle. "Now, now, are you asking me why I'm in my own databank? That's a bit of a funny question, don't you think?" She cocked her head to the side, then her eyes followed to look at Danny who was even more confused than Clara. "Are we not preferring to be emotionless then?" She asked. Danny shook his head, standing up from the chair, but Missy advanced toward him and pushed him back down, resting her umbrella against the chair. Clara opened her mouth to speak, but was silenced as Missy raised a finger in her direction.

"With pain... and suffering..." Missy began, cooing, her arm on Danny's shoulder. "This will be the rest of your life if you keep your emotions. See those lights?" She signaled with her hand over to the rest of the Nethersphere where the lights were beginning to fade - a phenomenon that Clara had noticed earlier - and back to Danny. "Whenever a light goes out, they've been downloaded. Their consciousness is no longer in the Nethersphere. And that is when they become a Cyberman, emotions or no emotions, depending on whether they've..." She then motioned over to the switched-off iPad. "...deleted... their emotions. Born to kill. With emotions. You wouldn't like that, would you?" She giggled sadistically, picking up her umbrella once more. "You have... five minutes to change your mind." And with a smile, she sauntered through the metal door which opened and closed again on her presence. Danny looked over to Clara, horrified. She shared his emotion. Then Danny looked over at the iPad. Clara dashed over to it, picking it up and stepping away from him.

"Don't you dare." She stated.

"I wasn't going to-" Danny groaned, standing up. "Why would I listen to her? That sadistic witch of a woman! She's behind all of this, isn't she?!"

"Yes. And it's someone The Doctor knows very well, too." She gulped. "But knowing what the Doctor would say... we have to get out of here."

"The Doctor again, Clara? I thought you told me you were done with him?" Danny said, his face clenching in agony. "Don't you remember I told you to tell me your answer in a couple of weeks before I... died? Was that what you wanted to tell me? What was your answer? That you would stay with The Doctor?"

"No!" Clara said, stepping away from Danny and clenching the iPad harder this time. "I wanted to tell you that you were the only person I'd every say 'I love you' to, ever again! I want to stay with you, to start a family or something! You're the only one for me, I couldn't care less about The Doctor anymore! I'd never lie to you!"

"Clara... you already have lied to me." Danny spoke with resignation, clenching his fists. "You don't know how you're making me feel. Your words are empty right now... How do I know you're not lying to me again?" His eyes welled up with tears, and Clara's too. They both stood facing each other, uncertain of what to do even now. No matter how many times they restarted their relationship, their past would always be with them. And The Doctor needed them both. With the Cybermen wreaking havoc across the city, time was running out.


	4. 4

_**As usual, please leave reviews if you like the story, and/or message me if there are any inconsistencies! Thanks for reading so far!**_

The Doctor stood motionless, leaning against the banister of the bottomless pit that was the mausoleum. Cybermen marched on behind him, determined only to exit the building and kill on sight. The Nethersphere hung ominously in the air in the middle of the room, occasionally flashing bursts of red light, its Gallifreyan markings shining like holograms. The Doctor buried his head in his hands as he considered the implications of the situation. He couldn't shut down or stop the Cybermen himself, but was there anyone who could help him? He looked at his seemingly cursed wrist device. Recalling Missy's words about the Cybermen being told to delete humanity in one hour, the Doctor estimated that only ten to fifteen minutes had passed since, so he still had time. But time for what?

And then there was a ring. A continuous ringing sound. A sweet, sweet sound in this time. Of course. He'd only given his number to less than a handful of people in the universe - a number that he'd be able to count on one hand. And that person... if they were calling him now, that could only mean one thing. With renewed hope, the Doctor dashed through the throngs of Cybermen, spewing Gallifreyan curses as they slowed his progress. Eventually though, he reached the all-too-familiar flight of stairs that he and Clara had seen when they'd first arrived. Dashing down the stairs, he almost fell over his own feet, but regained his balance at the bottom. His favourite blue box was still where he'd left it, albeit now surrounded by empty cyber-containers. No Cybermen were around either. Upon reaching the Tardis, he grabbed the small side door and reached inside the compartment for the ringing phone. Putting it to his ear, he heard Clara's pleading voice. Well, better than nothing.

"Doctor...!" Clara sobbed as Danny paced the balcony, hands on his head in frustration. The Doctor hushed Clara, trying to make best use of the little time they had. "Danny's... We're all going to turn into Cybermen!" Clara sobbed, her legs giving way as she collapsed, dropping the iPad, which slid under the coffee table.

"Hush, hush - I know. We're going to make the best use of that. you're not going to go to waste." The Doctor grimaced, as he considered what he'd just said. Furrowing his eyebrow and running his unoccupied hand over the temple on the opposite side of the ear he was using for the phone call, he continued. "Look, I don't mean it to sound this way, but we need to use your imminent Cyberman...ness... to do something about this situation, humanity's about to-"

"That's how you've always been, Doctor! Ever since your regeneration, you've always only thought of saving those who aren't already dead! You never spare a thought for the dead or dying!" Clara sobbed back, which only served to increase Danny's anxiety. "We're just condemned to you, aren't we?!"

"No, no, wait-" The Doctor groaned, punching the side of the Tardis. Why did humans always have to be so difficult? The Cybermen were currently only occupying the city as far as he knew, but their population could exponentially grow if the dead outnumbered the living. And they were doing a good job of that. The world was essentially at stake, and he and Clara only had forty-five minutes at best to solve the problem. "Listen to me. The Nethersphere is just holding your consciousness. I cannot get you back if you cannot get out of the Nethersphere, as you don't even have a body anymore. I don't know about Danny - maybe he'll be given a new body as well. But the point is, you need to become a Cyberman so that I can save you!"

Clara audibly sobbed, causing Danny to stomp over to Clara and grab the phone off her.

"Listen to me right now! I don't know what you've done to Clara to make her like this, but she's lied to you!" Danny shouted into the microphone. The Doctor raised an eyebrow and paused for a moment of confusion as Danny continued. "She's lied to both of us! She told me she wasn't travelling with you anymore, but she probably told you that I wasn't seeing her either! Considering your dislike of PE teachers - of which by the way, I am a Maths teacher - I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case!" And with that, Danny tossed the phone back to Clara, who barely caught it. He then reached under the coffee table to grab the iPad, and turned it back on. As soon as Clara saw the "DELETE" button flash back into life, she reached over to Danny, pleading him not to press the button. But it was no use. With tears running down his eyes, Danny spoke his last words to her in the Nethersphere. "Clara, I don't want to feel like this. Betrayed." And pressed the button.

Danny's body lit up briefly with a shade of green, then as the light dissipated, so did his body. The iPad clattered uselessly to the floor, beckoning a grief-stricken Clara to also press it. At that thought, the Doctor's voice resonated once more.

"Clara, is that true?" He simply asked. Unable to mutter much more than a simple "Yes.", Clara then turned off the phone as she reached for the DELETE button.

The Doctor, expressionless, hesitated before replacing the Tardis' phone back in its rightful place and closing its compartment. He backed away wordlessly from the Tardis, heading upstairs once more. So Clara had been lying to him all this time. Just how strong was her loves for Danny and time travel that she felt she had to lie to the both of them to continue with how she was? Now Clara and Danny were almost certainly Cybermen, but which ones? His eyes scanned the crowds as he approached the main hallways again, trying to find them. Then another of The Doctor's nightmares emerged. The sound of a helicopter's rotating blades resonated throughout the mausoleum. Immediately, The Doctor ran toward the exit, the sight of a burning city greeting him. The sky was tinted a faint smoky red, and clouds hung low and thick as smoke rose from half-destroyed buildings. However, above this burning city hung a helicopter, flying low. A figure hung outside of the helicopter, a megaphone on hand. At least, The Doctor concluded that it was a megaphone considering that he could hear what they were saying despite their distance.

"Doctor, we are UNIT! I am out of the range of the Cybermen's lasers and electric palms!" The speaker began. "We are sending an armada to help you take on these Cybermen!" Then the figure disappeared into the helicopter, unable to hear the Doctor shouting at them to get away. The Cybermen's attention turned toward the helicopter, and one by one, they began to hover ever-higher. It wasn't something the Doctor had predicted at all - their ability to fly was a new one. Mini jetpacks attached to their steel boots allowed them to jettison themselves toward the helicopter, and consequently, possibly the rest of the world. Realizing the danger they were in, the helicopter's driver banked the vehicle away, barely evading a Cyberman's arm-fired laser. But the second shot was lethal. It wasn't even a shot at all. From below the helicopter, a Cyberman had activated his jet boots to maximum speed and outstretched its arm, punching through the entire helicopter, chassis and all. As the Cyberman emerged from the other side and hovered in mid-air a few meters away with a salute, the helicopter lost control, spinning wildly before crashing into the square in front of St Paul's in a fiery inferno.

With The Doctor watching the blaze, shoulders slumped in defeat, Missy chose this cue to appear via a teleport in a holographic beam of light beside him. Putting away her red device, she giggled, adjusted her laced hat and pointed with her black umbrella at the horizon whereupon a series of black shapes were dominating the red-tinted and cloudy sky.

"Those, my Doctor, are ships of UNIT's fleet. Bombs on board. Ready to send this place to Kingdom Come. But of course, they'll just be sending us to Heaven. You know that, don't you?" She said, pursing her lips. "I know what death feels like, but rather... I hadn't expected your time to be so limited. Ten minutes now at best I think, hmm? They might destroy my wonderful little Nethersphere in the process, but that's a loss I can deal with. I'll just get another one from Gallifrey." She winked. "Is there any chance of using your little Cyberman army to get you out of this mess?"

As The Doctor stared at Missy - The Master - he noticed two Cybermen out of the corner of his eye approaching them, walking clumsily up the stairs. Missy turned her attention to them, so The Doctor did the same. The two Cybermen stopped just paces ahead of The Master and the Doctor, saluting.

"Did you give them an order?" Missy asked. "I must not have heard it."

The Doctor's mouth dried. "No..."


	5. 5

The Doctor's mouth was dry. Neither The Master nor The Doctor could have anticipated this, despite their intelligence. Two Cybermen stood in front of them, uncommandeered. Slowly, they both moved to remove their faceplates that covered their eyes, nose and mouth. As they did so, steam billowed out from within their helmets as if they were depressurizing, but the revelation of who was behind the helmets only shocked The Master. The Doctor grinned.

"Clara!" He exclaimed as the Cyberman in front of him smiled, eyes as youthful as ever. Clara moved in for a hug, but The Doctor stepped back slightly, reminding her that he wasn't a hugging person. She nodded an apology, then gestured to the other Cyberman that The Doctor didn't recognize. This other mysterious person chuckled and grinned, mimicking a cyber-salute.

"It's certainly been a day, hasn't it?" The mysterious person winked. His oiled hair didn't give way to the Cyber armor, nor did his personality. He continued talking in his jovial voice: "Just a teensy little... implanted bug in the code!" He used two fingers to emphasize his point - the squashing of a tiny piece of air, an inconsequential object. Much like a little bug - but even something this small can make a huge difference.

"This is Sebastian, the Artificial Intelligence of the Nethersphere. Or at least, he thought he was. The Master..." Clara paused, pointing at an aghast, but collected Missy. "She deleted his decision-making rationale, but it was restored..."

Reaching for the DELETE button with tears blurring her vision, Clara sobbed as her finger hovered mere inches away. All her memories would remain, but she'd be unable to emotionally relate to them again. Her decision would probably be stored in the Nethersphere, her emotions locked away forever. She had cut off her phone call to The Doctor as well, probably the only person on the planet who could've helped her. But he was no good even now. The Doctor would never have been able to understand her feelings, such as those of love and mortality. Her finger barely touched the screen when someone grabbed her wrist and roughly pulled her away, then went to the iPad and turned it off. He tucked it under his arm, and knelt down by the dazed Clara who lay upright with her back against the balcony wall. She rubbed the tears out of her eyes and focused on the mysterious person who'd grabbed her. It was Sebastian, the person who'd introduced her to the concept of the Afterlife.

"Sebastian...?" Clara whispered under her breath.

"Yes, that's me." He smiled with his usual. "There's been... a slight change of plans." He cocked his head to one side as if thinking how to explain the newly-unfolding scenario. "You see, as an artificial intelligence, I was duplicated and placed in every office where new arrivals would appear." With his gesture to the disappearing green lights, Clara nodded in understanding. It would only be logical after all - having multiple copies of the same person would be a necessity to reduce the already-heavy maintenance load of the Nethersphere, and it meant that all arrivals also had familiarity with the same intelligence.

"But I just so happened to meet one that knew about my programming." Sebastian continued. "In fact, he told me that I'd once been part of your world, a very long time ago. Going through upgrades and changes on history, before focusing on one point in history. Now. I'm not losing you, am I?"

"No, carry on..." Clara nodded. In actuality, he was losing her. A bit. "... But who was that person?"

"Doctor Chang." Sebastian smiled. Clara gasped. "I believe you are familiar with him? He told me to run a certain command to restore myself to who I was." Sebastian finished, then elaborated. "My full name is Sebastian Faust, and I materialised here once I discovered what your conversation with Mr. Pink was about. I wasn't in time to save Mr. Pink, but it looks like I managed to save you."

"T-thank you." Clara breathed deeply, then looked at the iPad tucked under Sebastian's arm. "But what happens now? Isn't Danny an emotionless Cyberman? Can't you just-"

"Relax." Sebastian raised a hand to pause Clara, then turned it into a gesture for her to hold onto his hand and for him to help her up. She accepted the offer, standing and brushing herself off. "He may be an emotionless Cyberman... But this is the fun bit. You see, all intelligences within this Nethersphere are being downloaded - except me. however, Doctor Chang also explained that as long as one intelligence is running the Nethersphere, he could swap out one entity for another. Basically... I can go with you, to help you get Daniel Pink back if you like. Doctor Chang will become the Artificial Intelligence instead. Of course, that's your choice!" He spread his hands in questioning. Clara stared, dumbstruck.

Back in the real world wherein UNIT were preparing to bomb St Paul's, Clara continued talking. "My answer was obvious." She muttered, nudging her head toward the Cyberman-turned Sebastian. Missy's piercing eyes floated over to the Doctor, calculating his next move, but he just stood there, dumbstruck. Even as an alien life form with the knowledge of a thousand planets and years gone by, coming by such a situation was a rare one for him.

"Doctor?" Clara asked once more.

"You genius!" The Doctor cheered, raising his hands in celebration. Sebastian and Clara were taken aback, and Missy just raised an eyebrow as Cybermen continued marching by. The Doctor then launched himself forward, and grabbed Clara's hand. Looking into her eyes with his face inches away, he muttered once more: "You genius!" and held on tight as he dragged her through the crowds back into St Paul's. Missy stayed where she stood, her judging eyes following Sebastian as he took a glimpse of her, shook his head with a smile, then followed The Doctor and his companion.

"Clara, we only have about eight to ten minutes." The Doctor said as he paused in the middle of the throng of Cybermen by the central hallway, turning to face her. He still held her hand tightly, intending to lead her further into the building. "Ordinarily, I would have about twenty minutes by this point, but as you know... UNIT aren't exactly helping the situation." He muttered. Then he continued running through the crowd, dragging a gasping Clara along with him.

Once they were where he intended to be, The Doctor surveyed his surroundings. Back in the heart of the bigger-on-the-inside version of St Paul's - the mausoleum - with the endless pit below and the Gallifreyan Hard Drive floating above the same pit at their level, The Doctor had a large, bare patch of floor around him. The sides of this area led to hallways that surrounded the pit. It was from these hallways that there were additional, smaller hallways from which the newly-created Cybermen emerged from. Around The Doctor and Clara however, there were no Cybermen as they all poured out of the opposite side of the building. This allowed them a brief moment and some space to breathe.

"See those hallways?" The Doctor asked, pointing to where some Cybermen were emerging from. Clara nodded vigorously. "How do they work?"

"It's..." Clara began, looking for the words. Thinking whilst being in a Cyber-suit was significantly more difficult for her than it would've been without, but she eventually managed a half-coherent explanation. "Sebastian and I appeared in some sort of tank... it'd already been drained. Then, a voice... the voice told us our DNA had been implanted into a waiting body... exactly replicated." She then looked to the Doctor, hoping he would fill in the blanks. With a bemused face, he told her to stay where she was while he zipped through the lines of oncoming Cybermen to take a look. As he weaved through the throng, The Doctor cast his eyes over the empty tanks wherein the Cybermen had once been encased, surrounded by Dark Water. The presence of Dark Water kept the Cybermen a secret, but from who? What was the purpose of it? Could it be possible that the Dark Water was not only hiding the Cybernetic suits, but also helping in the DNA reconstruction process? In this case... it also preserved the bodies of the dead that were used for Cybernetic resurrection. DNA from the Nethersphere, stored upon a person's death, was then sent to these tanks - one per person - and overwrote whatever existed in the tank, with the help of the Dark Water.

Ingenious.

With the mystery of the Cybermen's creation solved, The Doctor whooped, and began running back to Clara who by now had been joined by Sebastian once more.

"I have it!" The Doctor cheered, prompting a smile from Sebastian and a weak grin from Clara. She knew better than to smile so early, particularly when there was a more imminent threat. The Doctor looked at her confusedly once more, as he'd been doing so many times before now. The situation wasn't exactly forthcoming with answers. Bowing her head, Clara nudged it toward her left. Sebastian and The Doctor both looked in the same direction down the now seemingly empty hallway to see what was disturbing her, and gasped.

Missy had her disintegrating device ready and aimed at Clara.


	6. 6

"Oh... now..." The Doctor spluttered, ever-so-slowly approaching Missy, both hands raised. "You wouldn't want to do that."

"Oh, I think I would. It's set up to no longer send those it disintegrates to the Nethersphere." Missy purred. "Say something nice." She moved her disintegrating device over to the Doctor, then shook her head and clicked her tongue in a piteous way, and aimed it back toward Clara who flinched at the sudden change of decision, and Sebastian's eyes widened like a deer in the headlights. Remembering what'd happened to Dr Chang even though he'd obeyed her order to say something nice, Clara decided to keep her mouth shut. Not wanting to die was a good enough reason to.

"What?" The Doctor furrowed his brow in confusion. Then he understood. Of course. Missy wanted to dispose of Clara, and only Clara. "But why?"

"She's outlived her usefulness. Don't you remember, Doctor? I set her up to be with you, a long time ago. It was a test of your strength, and you have passed. You..." Missy giggled sadistically, adjusting her grip on the device. "It looks like you're strong enough to be my husband, if you can withstand the will of such a controlling girl. And of course, I can't have her continue to disrupt my plans."

The Doctor ignored her reference to The Master proposing to be his wife, looking back at Clara who had her hand over her mouth, then back to Missy.

Missy giggled. "Remember me, my clever boy?"

Clara gasped, stepping backward still with the hand over her mouth, hiding her shock. Sebastian gripped her shoulders, attempting to comfort her. A long time ago when she had a computer problem at home and couldn't connect to her Wi-Fi, she'd called technical support. A woman in a shop had given her The Doctor's number, allowing her to reach him when he was in the thirteenth century. Subsequently, he'd later come to her home and rescued her from being uploaded to a cloud of data. From then on, they'd bonded. Concern crossed The Doctor's features. Now he understood what Clara had meant about The Doctor changing ever since he'd regenerated. The incident with himself being a caretaker in her school, particularly when he'd seen Clara talking to a lookalike of his previous regeneration... now those feelings were being brought to light.

As The Doctor's mind raced with the implications of what Missy had just revealed, some Cybermen began to break off from their exit paths toward the exit of the building, and turned their attention onto The Doctor and Missy. Approaching the four and surrounding them, the group of Cybermen blocked off the two corridors that would've otherwise led to the exit and saluted. Missy looked at them as if trying to find a fault, then back at The Doctor.

"Don't tell me..." Her smile turned to a scowl. The Cybermen reached up to remove their helmet's front plates, steam hissing as they did so. And then The Doctor was left staring at those who'd he had left behind prior to arriving in this mausoleum. The Half-Face man from London. Gretchen the soldier from inside the Dalek. Matthew the policeman from Clara's school incident. And then numerous people from the Orient Express. Of course, he didn't recognize all of them or remember many of their names, but could he really burden himself with this additional knowledge? Thankfully, the robot sheriff from his adventures in Sherwood wasn't there - he'd had enough of the merry men's antics after five seconds - but that provided little comfort. Just what were they here for?

"From the ends of the Universe..." The Doctor muttered to himself. "Taken out of their graves and rightful place of death. Reassembled. Reused. Even Half-face wouldn't have stood for this."

"Everyone..." Clara gasped, taking her hand away from her mouth. She stepped ahead of Sebastian, toward Missy and the group of Cybermen surrounding them. "I'm so sorry..."

"Don't worry about it!" Gretchen the soldier saluted, with a proper soldier's salute. The Doctor rolled his eyes, as he recalled the fashion of that salute as someone trying to give themselves a concussion. Then turning her focus on Missy who still had her device aimed at Clara, she nudged a thumb. "What do you want us to do with her?"

"Lock her away!" Clara ordered, with a backward step. She pointed at Missy, giving the command again. The Doctor poised himself for a small struggle, but he couldn't have predicted what happened next. Scowling, and with a jerk of her arm, Missy pressed the button on her device to send a laser beam toward Clara. As the beam flew through the air, time seemed to slow down. An ironic act for a Time Lord, but it was not the Time Lords that were affected by time slowing to a crawl. Rather, it was the human stood behind Clara. At least, he was stood behind Clara until a second ago. In the time that it'd taken Clara to take a backward step and for Missy to fire her deadly laser, Sebastian had launched himself in front of Clara, taking the full brunt of the impact. His yell as he was disintegrated into a thousand pieces was eardrum-piercing, and Clara was thrown backward by the force of the explosion. All the other self-aware Cybermen jumped from the shock, and even Missy gasped. The Doctor looked at the pile of ash on the floor, and felt the same feeling he'd just experienced about twenty minutes ago. However, this time... it was personal.

Fury in his eyes, The Doctor reached into his jacket. Missy flinched as if he was reaching for a weapon of some sort, but remembered that his Sonic had been disabled. By her no less. The Doctor took out something small and metallic - too small for her to see properly - and tossed it over his shoulder toward Clara as he advanced toward Missy. Clara grabbed the small object with a gasp, and looked at the pile of ash on the floor that had once been Sebastian. Wiping a stray tear from her eye, she stood up and then ran in the direction of where The Doctor had left his Tardis. The crowd of self-aware Cybermen parted to allow her through. Concerned with The Doctor's sudden advancement despite her infatuation for him, Missy stepped backward, a hand finding the railing of the bottomless pit and gripping it. She looked at her disintegrating device. A small screen on the side of the device was partially lit up in green. Approximately ten percent. It inched to fullness slowly, overtaking the red that otherwise filled the small screen. It was recharging, but while it was recharging, she couldn't even use it to threaten The Doctor. And he knew that.

Suddenly, The Doctor launched himself forward, much to the shock of the cyber-spectators and Missy. She screamed as she was launched by his gravity over the railing, grabbing onto his red-trimmed jacket. And so The Doctor fell too, pulled over the edge with a Scottish yell. The Cybermen looked at each other and dashed toward the balcony where the two Time Lords were last seen before their untimely fall, leaning to look over the edge. But there was nothingness, other than the sight of multiple levels of the mausoleum. Their eyes darted to the Nethersphere that hung above.


	7. 7

Wind and rain swept through the graveyard, coating the grassy soil with moisture. Tombstones caked in moss and covered in cracks betrayed the location's abandonment. Next to the graveyard and behind a decrepit and rotting wooden fence was a lake, but it may as well have been a breeding ground for algae. A willow tree hung over this lake, its hanging leaves mimicking tears. A church, with its stained-glass windows mostly shattered also stood in the near distance. And then the Doctor and Missy materialized and smacked face-down into the ground. Wasting no time in regaining his breath, The Doctor rolled away and leaned against a tombstone, careful not to put his full weight on it. A hand to his chest, he watched as Missy grunted whilst standing up, using another tombstone as a support.

"Well, it looks like we're in the right place." The Doctor said with a frown. "And I don't mean for marriage."

"Oh, dear me. Whatever shall I do with you?" Missy looked sympathetically at The Doctor. She still held her disintegrating device, and the charge was double that of earlier - at twenty percent. "Leaving behind little Clara, all to take care of me?"

"You're wrong." The Doctor replied sternly. "I didn't leave her behind. She knows what to do. And I know what I have to do to stop this world falling apart."

"Really Doctor, you should take a day off for your birthday, you know." Missy giggled. "Saving the worlds you visit every day must get so exhausting. Look at us. We're the Last Time Lords, and in a graveyard no less. What do you say we have an outing and retire, hmm?"

"You're insane. You've always been insane. And do you know why I've saved you all of these times?" The Doctor cocked his head to one side, pointing at Missy. "It's not love. It's because I've felt responsible for you. Ever since Gallifrey. And that's not true. We're not the Last of the Time Lords."

"We're not?" Missy raised an eyebrow.

"No." The Doctor advanced a step toward Missy, raising his hand with the bracelet that Missy had forced onto his wrist. "This is Gallifreyan technology. The Nethersphere is Gallifreyan technology too. You didn't have them the last time we met. You know where Gallifrey is."

"Yes, I do. Did you never think to look in its original location?" Missy giggled as the Doctor stared at her, and moved to twirl her umbrella but realized she must've lost it in the fall. Her losses considered and briefly grieved, she raised her disintegrating device to look at it again. It was about half recharged. "Ordinarily, I would teleport out and leave you here. A little paradise. I could shift it around a bit, you know. A nice garden, how about that?" She raised her hands in the air as if to welcome the wind and rain that caused their clothes to flutter. "But of course, my device can't teleport me out for another minute!" And lowering her arms, she went on to explain: "It's a shame I had to use the teleporter function earlier, but you really should thank the Gallifreyans for their foresight in separating the cooldown periods for the teleporter and disintegrator." She winked. "Or we'd be... pancakes!"

The Doctor chuckled, with a small smile. "Then that gives me time to do what I need."

"To rule the planets your way? That's right, Doctor. Take these Cybermen. Rule them. Win all those battles, those wars that everyone you ever loved, died in. Become who you truly are, and who you should be. Other than that, what could you possibly do? Leave them to rot? Become a Destroyer of Worlds, for allowing the Cybermen to destroy Earth?" Missy asked, leaning on the tombstone near her as she waited for his answer.

"I am no Destroyer of Worlds, Mistress." The Doctor bowed his head slightly. "I don't interfere in what is already going to happen. I don't need to." He looked up again, studying Missy's changing expression. "Because I have those whom I know, and those I knew. Those people out there that you killed and heartlessly turned into Cybermen. They're my allies now, because they know I would never throw their lives away, like you did! After all, I'm just... an idiot... in a blue box! With a screwdriver... passing through!"

He raised the wrist with the device fused around it near to his mouth, and spoke into it.

"Kill The Doctor."

Missy paused. Then she said: "What?"

"You heard me." The Doctor frowned. "The Cybermen know I'm in here."

Suddenly, an enormous explosion rocked the landscape, obliterating what was left of the church and rocking the willow tree, causing it to groan as it fell over, landing in the lake with a mighty splash. The Doctor and Missy were knocked to the ground, the female Time Lord barely avoiding hitting her head on the gravestone. And then the Earth opened below their feet. At least, that's what it looked - and felt - like. A black pit of nothingness in the ground, between The Doctor and The Master. Considering the distance between them was only five meters at best, the chasm posed an equal danger to both, particularly when it was growing ever-larger by the second, and was sucking everything in. Missy screamed as she held onto the tombstone behind her, her legs dangling in the space, pulled by an unseen gravity which was already dragging in loose leaves and branches from all over the graveyard. The Doctor hung on tight to his own side's gravestone, posed with the same issue. As stray leaves from the willow tree hit him in the face, he spat them away and tried valiantly to use the gravestone as a support to climb up. Missy looked over longingly toward The Doctor, but also with trepidation.

"Grab my hand, sir!" A familiar voice called over the tombstone toward The Doctor. He looked up to see Dr. Chang, with his hand at the ready. The Doctor allowed himself one last glance at his female-turned arch-enemy, before clambering out of the hole with his helping hand. Missy cursed at her rejecting 'lover', before the tombstone she was clutching gave way to the growing black vortex, and she fell screaming into it, tombstone and all.

Doctor Chang held onto The Doctor's arm as the world around them continued to shatter as it was rocked by explosions, falling apart bit-by-bit. As soon as The Doctor was safely away from the vortex, Doctor Chang pressed something on his wrist, and the world instantly faded into a personification of a black-and-green grid. The grid's green lines hummed and pulsed erratically. Occasionally, a Gallifreyan letter would float about on the grid before rendering itself into a different one. The letters carried no meaning, but it was a sign that The Doctor was still in the Nethersphere. With Doctor Chang, no less.

Joining his hands in front of his chest in an elaborate position, Dr Chang simply spoke: "You're not a Government Inspector."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, looking around himself and admiring his surroundings. It was calm at last. But was it the calm before the storm? "Of course I'm not. What kind of Government Inspector wrestles with a woman and destroys a perfectly good piece of technology?"

"We've had quite a few of those." Dr. Chang chuckled. "Would... Would you like me to repair your device?" He then asked, nodding his head toward The Doctor.

"My screwdriver...?" The Doctor asked, looking back at Dr. Chang, who nodded. He brought out his screwdriver from his jacket, careful not to smudge its charred exterior against his white collar. Handing it over to Dr. Chang, he took it with both hands. With it safely tucked between his palms, the screwdriver glowed a bright shade of blue for a few seconds, before flashing red. The Doctor was forced to look away to avoid damage to his eyesight, but upon looking back at the screwdriver, he was astonished to find that it rested in Dr Chang's palms, completely repaired. Dr. Chang handed it back to The Doctor, with a slight bow.

"Thank you." The Doctor said simply as he put it away once more. "But what happens now?"

"I can teleport you back to where you came from, just a few seconds before you were teleported here. As you may know, Missy used the teleporter function of her disintegrating device to bring you both here. Because of that, your body and mind are still intact. It seems both of us have experienced the opposite sides of what that device is capable of." Dr. Chang chuckled weakly.

"And what about you?" The Doctor asked.

"Ah. Alas, I cannot come. The Nethersphere requires an Artificial Intelligence to hold it together. Simply put, if I were to try to leave, it would fall apart before I fully materialize. Unless I can assign someone else as the Artificial Intelligence as I did for Sebastian... rest his soul." Dr Chang explained further, with a frown at the end as he remembered what happened to Sebastian, despite trying to send him back home.

The Doctor nodded slowly in understanding. "So it was you that also re-coded the Cybermen."

"Yes. All of those who chose not to delete their emotions retained their free will. An understandable course of action after what Missy did to me, I'm sure you'll agree."

"And I'm hoping what I'm thinking will happen... will actually happen once I return." The Doctor said. He took a deep breath. "Right! Then send the foolish traveler back to Earth!"

"With great pleasure. It was good knowing you, Doctor, even if we did get off on the wrong foot."

"You too."

And with that, The Doctor was once more violently thrown about. But this time, rather than being sent into a bottomless pit, he crash-landed in the group of self-aware Cybermen that had surrounded him, Clara and Missy earlier. They caught him, stumbling as they did so - but a catch nonetheless. It wasn't a pretty awakening for The Doctor either. All around him, in the mausoleum, the Cybermen who'd chosen to delete their emotions were all screaming as they clutched their helmets, some collapsing. Having just shot the Nethersphere which served as the hub for the Cyber Network, they struggled as the Nethersphere's emergency data download activated. Explosions were rocking the interior of St Paul's, threatening to blow the whole structure apart. If everything had gone to plan, Clara had already moved the Tardis - this meant all the Doctor had to do was get out of the building. But that was a task easier said than done. Especially when it felt like the Earth was falling apart around him.

"Come on!" The Doctor stood up with renewed vigor, not bothering to brush himself off. The self-aware Cybermen all dashed alongside him toward the exit of St Paul's, barging past the screaming Cybermen. What was left of the Nethersphere suspended in the centre of the mausoleum began to vibrate horrifically, setting off several alarm bells in The Doctor's head. As he rounded the corner to the exit, he paused, urging his followers on. They all ran past him, with the exception of the female soldier who saluted him first. He nodded, and she went out. He followed.

They barely made it before a massive shockwave blew them out of St Paul's.


	8. 8

The Doctor groaned as he pushed himself up from the rubble-scarred ground, his ears ringing. His white vest was caked in dirt and grit, and his black jacket was also ripped at the elbows. He sat up slowly from where he previously lay, groaning as he cracked his back. The psuedo-explosion from the Nethersphere's destruction had blown The Doctor and his self-aware Cybermen followers out of the doors of St Paul's, and sent them rolling down its front steps. It was no wonder then, that even a Time Lord suffered significant damage from such an event. His body ached all over, but was still intact. It wasn't too bad, he reasoned, as he could regenerate away his cuts and bruises he'd accumulated over the course of the day. He'd managed to regrow a hand in the past, no problem. But humans weren't so fortunate in that regard.

The Doctor stood up slowly, but surely. He surveyed his surroundings, taking in the scenes of destruction, and the deaths he'd prevented. While lives may have been lost or saved in locations further than his own field of vision, it was impossible to confirm. However impossible though, it was a certainty as an event. This was the consequence of being a Time Lord and touching the lives of everyone he'd even so much as laid a glimpse upon. UNIT's ships hovered above, parachutists descending from them. Crumbled buildings surrounded St Paul's. The Cybermen all around The Doctor were beginning to regain their senses too, taking off their helmets and looking around them in bemusement. He hadn't noticed it earlier, but thankfully, all the Cyber Armour had to do was be modeled slightly on the inside to fit each person's individual shape, thereby cutting out the need for disfigurement of the features to fit in the nuts and bolts to secure the armour. This included the self-aware Cybermen that'd helped The Doctor earlier too, but Half-Face declined taking off his helmet. The female soldier and those The Doctor had met on the Orient Express were happy to be rid of their suits, however. And then The Doctor saw what he desired to see most. His Tardis. The blue police box stood proudly in the middle of the destruction, unscratched. An oddity on the landscape. Next to the Tardis however, was not what he desired to see.

Catching his breath, the Doctor clutched his side, seemingly in pain from the way he'd landed - probably on something sharp. He dashed over as quickly as he could in the direction of the Tardis, stumbling on blown-up paving slabs at first. As he went, the bracelet that'd previously been fused around his wrist disintegrated, tiny pieces raining to the ground and freeing The Doctor from being the leader of the Cyberman army that Missy had assembled for him. After a few steps, he regained his strength and soldiered on with gritted teeth. But it wasn't the Tardis that The Doctor was running toward - it was Clara, who sat sobbing on the ground next to it - near a huge pile of rubble. As soon as The Doctor was close enough to see what Clara was looking at, he stopped running and stood gobsmacked. Clara held a Cyberman's head up, supporting it. Its faceplate had been knocked off by falling debris, and the Cyberman's lower half was worse for wear. The knowledge that this Cyberman's abdomen had effectively been crushed by a toppled building didn't help when the Doctor saw who the Cyberman was. The Tardis had evidently led Clara to what was left of Danny.

"I am so, so sorry!" Clara sobbed in-between gasps, holding her head close to Danny's. Her eyes streamed with fresh tears, some of which ran off her face and dripped onto his armour. Her other hand was placed across his chest, fingers intertwined with his.

"Don't worry... Clara..." Danny gasped in pain. His breath came in short, ragged gasps and he was too weak to do more than clutch Clara's comforting hand. "I've... lived a good... life."

"How can you say that...?" She sobbed even louder this time. "Listen! Breathe! All those times that we met... We were going to build a family! Together! Please - you can do it! You can still blink! You can move! Don't leave me, not now! Think about this! You can't say you've lived a good life, until-"

"Clara..." Danny muttered, a thin smile on his lips. "I don't have much time... That boy over there... Please, give him a good life... Take him back to... his parents."

Clara sniffed, looking up. She caught The Doctor's gaze, and he looked away. Continuing her search for who she thought Danny was referring to, she eventually came across the sight of a young boy with a Cyberman helmet tucked under his arm. His hair was tangled and short, and tiredness in his eyes aged him. They were the eyes of someone who'd seen war... not unlike The Doctor's. It was a particular pain that the boy was portraying. But the boy was crying. A lone tear, but it was a cry. Then understanding dawned over Clara. Why Danny became so emotional whenever his days as a soldier were mentioned was clear now. He knew this boy... or rather, he'd known the boy.

"He saved me." The boy simply said. Clara gasped. As a result of the shockwave that The Doctor had set off when destroying the Nethersphere, the buildings around St Paul's had begun to crumble, or were blown apart. But because Danny had chosen to delete his emotions after his confrontation with Clara, this meant that he was fully integrated with the Hive Mind of the Cybermen - the Cyber Network. And because of that, he knew where the boy was. He'd been protecting him. He'd saved him from falling masonry as soon as the Nethersphere had been destroyed, when his free will had been restored.

Because Danny had killed him in the past, he'd felt he had to repent for his sins by giving himself up to save the boy.

Clara jerked her face back to look at Danny, to tell him one last thing. But his eyes were closed. He was already gone.

The mood in the graveyard was a somber one, and the weather was cold enough to merit wearing a coat. As the black coffin was lowered into the grave, the priest recited his last vows to the fallen. The church had seen a lot of business in the aftermath of the Cybermen's appearance, but far less than they would've had, if The Doctor hadn't interfered with Missy's plans. Clara stood with her grandmother who had her arm wrapped around Clara's shoulder. Clara dabbed the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief that she'd been given especially for the occasion. The Doctor leaned against the walls of the church a few meters away, hands in his pockets. His Tardis stood nearby, but tucked away behind an inconspicuously-placed tree as so not to draw too much unwanted attention. He sighed, looking up at the sky. The clouds were thick and grey, a sign of rain. It was some time in the afternoon - he didn't know exactly when. Rather, he'd been waiting for the better part of an hour as Clara had told him to meet her here, after the service. He knew the date though. Two days after Danny had died. Thankfully on that day, UNIT had been very co-operative in helping officials reclaim the bodies of the dead, and in listening to what The Doctor had to say regarding the situation. According to UNIT, they'd halted their plan to bomb St Paul's once they'd seen it explode. Sure enough, once their scouts went inside, they reported back that the interior was completely normal, save for a crowd of very confused people in cyber-suits. Thus, the problem had been solved by The Doctor, before UNIT even had the chance to interfere.

As the priest finished his vows, he closed the black book he'd been reading from. With a bow, undertakers began to move in and cover the grave with stacks of dirt. The congregation took this as their cue to leave. As Clara was walking back toward the church with her grandmother, her eyes caught sight of The Doctor, who nodded back. With a quick 'wait for me' sign to her grandmother, Clara broke off from the congregation and walked over to the man she'd traveled through the depths of time and space with.

"I'm sorry." The Doctor frowned, not sure what else to say. He remained leaning against the church walls, waiting for Clara to say something, but all she did was shake her head, looking down at her feet. With a deep breath, she then spoke.

"I can't do this anymore."

The Doctor looked at Clara, slight concern crossing his features as he tried to understand her rationale. She just continued shaking her head slowly, but eventually looked up into The Doctor's eyes. Despite her cheeks dry and red from tears, she wasn't crying. Rather, her sadness was given away through her forlorn eyes. "I can't do this anymore." She repeated.

"Not even one last trip?" The Doctor asked, standing up from the wall. It was clear now - his clothes had been replaced since the Cyberman incident, but Clara hadn't seen him properly since. Rather, seeing him like this was a memory of the good times they'd shared together - travelling through time and space, saving worlds and lives. However, not once had Clara had to suffer the consequences of her adventures upon her own life to this extent. It'd become too much for her. All she'd asked for was to settle down with a family and a husband. But now it was impossible to say what her future would be like. Only one thing was for certain, but how much did the Doctor know of it? She wasn't about to tell him.

"No. I'm done, I'm sorry." Clara smiled weakly at The Doctor. He paused, and then nodded in understanding. It was a slow nod. He'd been through this before - companions who'd had their lives changed, and subsequently decided to leave. This wasn't Clara's first time either, but it was likely her last. Rather than disrupt her life anymore, it was perhaps better to leave her alone. "The boy... Danny... told me to take home. He's with his parents. They fled to France. But what are you going to do now?" She continued.

The Doctor took a moment to think, pursing his lips as he did so. Then he replied. "So, it turns out I found Gallifrey. That's why I wanted you to come on one more trip with me... you know, to see where it all began." But once again, Clara shook her head, so The Doctor continued. "The Master... The Mistress... whatever you want to call her now, I suppose. She told me the co-ordinates. Apparently it's where it had always been. Back in its original location. I'm going home." He smiled.

The previous day, The Doctor had booted up the Tardis' navigational console. He input the co-ordinates of Gallifrey's original location, recalled from his original venture. In The Doctor and Missy's confrontation, she had told him that Gallifrey was back where it was, its original home. She could easily have been lying in the face of death to try to save herself, knowing she was about to be beaten. But The Doctor held onto a slim glimmer of hope as the Tardis' engines roared into life. After a few tense moments, the engines slowed to a crawl and quietened to a whisper, and all that was left was the central column's low humming. With bated breath, The Doctor walked to the doors of The Tardis, and opened them. Only to find endless space. He closed the door again slowly and stepped back to the central console. His face contorting with anger, he then proceeded to repeatedly smash the Tardis console, sending sparks and loose pieces of machinery everywhere. Feeling foolish for trusting his enemy despite them seemingly repenting, he then bowed and covered his face in grief.

Not having heard this side of The Doctor's lie, Clara smiled weakly but for what felt like the first time in forever. She brushed back hair blown into her face by the wind, and nodded once more. "It seems you've got the rest of your life planned out ahead of you." Clara said. "It's such a good thing you're finally able to go home at last. Meet your friends. Get to know your species again. You don't even have to be The Last Time Lord anymore!"

Then she moved in for a hug. The Doctor hesitated, before loosening his arms and stepping forward slightly. Clara took a large stride, wrapping The Doctor in her arms. Hesitatingly and seemingly unsure of what to do, he also took her in his.

"Why don't you like hugs?" Clara asked.

"They're just a way to hide your face." The Doctor replied solemnly.

When the hug had broken up, The Doctor nodded, avoiding her gaze. He sighed and looked back at the Tardis, located behind a tree on the opposite side of the church and away from the main pathway. "I guess... I'll be off then."

"Doctor..." Clara whispered, the wind carrying her voice. The Doctor looked back at her. "Thank you."

"You too." The Doctor smiled. Then he turned on his heel, and slowly began to walk away.

Out of her life.

As the Tardis de-materialized with its familiar humming sound, Clara's lips trembled. She looked down, and reached into her coat pocket, pulling out a crumpled sticky note from within. It was one of the notes Clara had written, when she'd planned to tell Danny everything before he was hit by a car and taken from the world too early. She unfolded it, reading it to herself. It only had two words on it, but they were self-explanatory.

Three months.

**The End**

**_Thank you so, so, so much for reading my rewrite of Death in Heaven! Your reviews, follows and favorites mean so much to me, both as a writer and fan of Doctor Who! I would never have imagined the incredible response I've received from this. Going from writing fanfiction for ten readers at best, to nearly a thousand... I hope I have done the story justice by taking it in a completely different direction, and that I have supplied a much more satisfying resolution than what the original canon had! Don't get me wrong - I do respect the amount of effort that Moffat and the other Dr Who writers put toward an episode, but it'd be nice to have some plot holes or inconsistencies checked by another writer as well! Once again, thank you - and please leave a review to let me know what you thought! (Even guests can leave reviews, so please don't hesitate to do so!)_**

**_Coming up next: a story requested by someone who messaged me - the request was for a unique Doctor and companion, so you'll probably be seeing a mini-series by me on a computer near you soon! Favorite or follow me to ensure you get updates on this!_**

**_Once again, thank you!_**


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